Fantastic line up but blimey, you're not wrong about the clashes! Obviously the thing with these urban festivals is you're meant to hop from venue to venue and watch a few songs of each band and try and see as much as you can. but I'd not want to miss any of the Wire set which would mean missing at least 4 other things I'd really want to see.

Venue hopping is a possible approach, although in Brighton the distances between the various venues might be a bit too long to make it from venue to venue in time. Risk is one ends up seeing almost nothing. It's also a bit tiring to walk so much for four days. I was in Utrecht last weekend and it was a similar thing. Impressive line-up but four or five acts playing at the same time in different venues, so i ended up staying only at the Tivoli-Vredenburg for the Mouth to Mouth curated by Michael Gira and only saw Wire, Swans, Savages+Bo Ningen and Matt/Graham's noisy-droning improvisation.

That's why i didn't post anything about it so far :)Didn't want to spoil the surprise to those going to Brighton. On the other hand it's so quiet on this forum that i sometimes wonder whether there's more than a couple people reading it at all. So i guess it would only be a spoiler to a very limited number of people.

Highlights for me were probably Stealth of a Stork and Harponeed. One of the new songs had very nice guitar parts from Matt. A couple of others sounded slightly unrehearsed. In particular one which finished very soon and abruptly after just one verse and a chorus, and gave me the impression it was given up in the middle before it collapsed :) Another new one can be partly heard herehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocu5PXE9vUQ

Nice gig, i enjoyed it but i'm sure they'd be much better after a few live dates or with more rehearsing.

very good one yesterday in brighton. i liked it much better than utrecht. better sound, band played better. new songs sounded more rehearsed (which they indeed were, from what i heard after the show). tim lewis was on keyboards. now looking forward to drill played with swans.

I enjoyed the show and thought that Drill was particularly superb. Not so sure about most of the new songs. Collectively they seem a bit straightforward. I bobbed over to see Jesca Hoop who delivered an intimate and powerful set of songs.A great night, and wonderful event.

Tonight at The Hope there was a short gig by a band called The Fly whose members looked extremely similar to Colin, Graham, Matt and Rob. They played Wire songs for 30 minutes in front of less than 50 people. It was excellent and great fun, one of the best gigs in the whole festival.Setlist:I Am The FlyAdvantage in HeightMoreoverAnother The LetterBoiling BoyTwo People In A RoomAttractive SpaceSpent

I'm guilty as charged. I still look in on the forum now and again but I feel I have nothing to contribute at the moment. The Drill festival looked interesting. But living, working and parenting in Glasgow meant my attendance was impossible. I dearly hope it was well attended and profitable...although I didn't see much in the way of mainstream media publicity for the event

Ditto, as above. I check in regularly but am not able to commit to travelling to see the band live. Delighted, though, that they continue to make a vital contribution to the cultural life, whenever and wherever.

Reports say Colin, Malka & Matthew made an appearance on Friday night at British Sea Power's Krankenhaus mini festival, joining BSP for what was described as an "extended krautrock jam" or something to that extent. Returning the favour from Drill:Brighton, it seems.

It was part of the Krautrock Karaoke Night. KKN is a regular event that takes place something like once a month or so, mostly in London. It's organized by Kenichi Iwasa, one of the guys who play in the Xaviers, the band that supported Wire in a tour a couple of years ago. In the Krautrock Karaoke Nights they play songs by Can, Neu!, Faust etc. Which songs are played is decided by posting and voting songs on the related facebook events. As one can imagine the nights often end up with long improvised jams. Colin, Malka and Matt have already played a few times at Krautock Karaoke nights. Some videos of these can be seen on Youtube. Also at the Drill:Festival there was a Krautrock Karaoke event, where Colin, Malka, Max Franken and a young guy from Brighton called Tuval have played one song. This month there have been even three Krautrock Karaoke nights: the Drill:Festival one, then one at Cafe Oto with a long list of musicians (including Fay Milton, the drummer of Savages) and now this one in Brighton with British Sea Power and other Brighton musicians. I can imagine that in future additionally to the London events there might be regular KKNs also in Brighton. The KKNs are fun, although sometimes a bit chaotic :)